Read more
This book examines the notion of the pursuit of meaning in Julian Barnes's three consecutive novels: Flaubert's Parrot (1984), Staring at the Sun (1986) and A History of the World in 10 Chapters (1989). The first chapter situates Barnes's novels in the context of the discourses of postmodernism. The focus of Chapter Two is a search for the consolations and reassurances of religion in Staring at the Sun. Chapter Three explores the pursuit of meaning through art as enacted in Flaubert's Parrot and flags the contending approaches to art that are confronted in the text. The last chapter is devoted to "Parenthesis," the half-chapter of A History of the World in 10 Chapters, and considers love's capacity to transcend the entropy and relativity of the disillusioned world of postmodernity.
About the author
Wojciech Dr¿g is a lecturer at the University of Wroc¿aw. He received an MA from the University of Glamorgan and a PhD from the University of Wroc¿aw. He is the author of Revisiting Loss: Memory, Trauma and Nostalgia in the Novels of Kazuo Ishiguro (2014). Dr¿g¿s academic interests focus on experimental literature and contemporary British fiction.
